Dead Man's Boots
by CaffieneKitty
Summary: Just because you've shot something absolutely dead, doesn't mean it can't still ruin your life.   Rated T for safety: disturbing themes and scenes.


**Disclaimer:** Oh, I definitely don't own the boys or their world. Aren't you glad?  
**Warnings:_(Disturbing scenes, themes, some language)_** Spoilers up to the end of season 2, highly unlikely speculation for post season 2.  
**A/N:** Tiny bits of crack, mostly angst I think. Definitely not humor, though there are slightly silly bits. A short exploration of a thought I had after AHBL2. Timeline is a bit mangled in this, so watch your step, I've tried to leave clues.

**Dead Man's Boots**  
by CaffieneKitty

The exorcism in Grand Falls was where the beans were finally spilled. The demon had shouted overtop of Sam's latin, and that was it. Sam lost his place in the exorcism, had to start from the beginning. Dean just kept punching, only harder.

Afterward, Dean crawled into a bottle for three days, and Sam walked around with a tilt to his head and a confused half-smirk like he was waiting for the punchline to a cosmic joke he was pretty sure wasn't funny.

-

Weeks earlier, Sam applied another towel full of ice to a bruised temple.

"Why're they throwing _me_ around all the time?" He flexed a shoulder. "I mean, you haven't gotten a scratch on you since..."

"Ghost, in the Black Hills. Last week."

"That didn't even count. It just seems we're fighting demons everywhere we go and they're treating me like a punching bag, but not even touching you."

"Same old, same old, Sammy. You get your ass kicked, I save it. Nothing new."

"It hasn't been like that since I was a teenager, Dean, and you know it."

"Yeah, whatever," Dean said, drinking a beer.

But Dean wondered about it too.

-

Months earlier, Dean had gotten out of his deal.

It was so simple, they should have known there was more to it. A red-eyed demon had showed up in a blonde at a gas station of all places a couple weeks after the gates had opened in Wyoming. Not summoned, just _there_. She'd offered to lift Dean's half of the deal, no strings, Sam and Dean both to live out whatever lifespan they had.

Once Sam had used his nascent legal bullshit skills to make sure the very plain terms of her new deal were iron-clad, Dean had kissed her. If he'd left his eyes open, he'd have seen the fear in hers.

Sam saw. Sam said nothing.

She voluntarily left for Hell, fleeing her borrowed body like it was a burning house.

-

A week after Dean's deal was no longer an issue, Sam still couldn't stand AC/DC. Especially the same AC/DC tape played over and over and over and-

"Okay, enough, Dean! You've been playing that tape constantly for the last four hundred miles. Switch it. Metallica, anything!"

"I would, but I can't find my tapes."

"Still? I didn't-"

"I know you didn't do anything to 'em, Sam. I just can't find 'em. Some asshole with great taste in music must've boosted 'em in the hotel parking lot before we left Idaho."

"Radio then."

"In the Rockies? Dunno what reception's gonna be like."

Dean punched out the tape and spun the dial. Marilyn Manson. Spun it again. Sepultura. Again. Teletubby theme music. "Dude, what the...?" Spun it again. Muskrat Love. He turned the radio off. "Radio stations in this place are frigging insane."

Of course they checked into it. Of course they turned up nothing. Nothing at all. The single AM station in the area played country, 24/7, and suggested there was some kind of atmospheric inversion and between that and the mountain pass they'd probably gotten access to stations from Europe or something.

The Winchesters had looked at each other, checked the car for EMF, sprinkled holy water on the dash with a gratifying lack of smoke and continued on.

Dean's tapes turned up in the trunk the next day under a case of ammo. Half of them had been recorded over with Queen. Oddly, Dean found he didn't mind.

-

Three days after Grand Falls, when he was absolutely certain the cosmic joke wasn't funny at all, Sam collected Dean from the bar. He poured Dean limply into the passenger seat and dragged him from the car to the hotel room.

While Sam was removing Dean's shoes, Dean's eyes opened and he stared blankly at the ceiling, giggling, tears running down the sides of his face.

"Boots. Dead man's boots, Sammy. Who knew? Who the hell knew?"

"Go to sleep Dean," said Sam, rolling Dean on his side and pulling a cover overtop of him.

"Who knew?"

-

The immediate effect noticed over the week following Grand Falls was they didn't need to hunt the demons down anymore. Now that the truth was out, they came sniffing around like stray dogs. Didn't struggle, as long as Dean ordered them not to. Just lay there quietly with black betrayed eyes staring as the Latin words sent them back to hell. After awhile, it felt like kicking puppies. Evil puppies, but still, puppies.

"GO HOME!" Dean was shouting at the ceiling the following morning. "GO HOME! GO BACK TO HELL AND NEVER RETURN!!!"

The ceiling thumped as the occupant of the room upstairs expressed their displeasure at the noise, but nothing else happened. The demons kept coming.

-

Every morning for two weeks after Grand Falls, Dean checked his green eyes for hints of yellow. On the fifteenth day, he punched the bathroom mirror until it shattered.

The cuts on his knuckles were healed a day later. Sam said nothing.

-

"I can take torment, Sam. I can take death and pain. I can take going to hell to save you. I can't take this."

"Put the gun down, Dean. You aren't thinking clear."

"Nonono, Sammy. It's perfectly clear. If I do it myself, no one gets my frigging boots. It stops. Here, with me. Now."

"But if you do, they'll be acting at random again, unpredictable. Lots more people will die. Because of this, you can keep them in control until we can get to them and get rid of them."

Sam didn't point out that the gun he took from his brother's hands probably wouldn't kill Dean anymore anyway.

Y'know. Tact.

-

A couple months after Grand Falls, it was almost just another damned pain in the ass.

Dean had a default order for the ones that showed up that they couldn't deal with immediately, since they wouldn't follow any order that sent them back to Hell. Any that showed up at an inconvenient time were told to 'Go to Poughkeepsie and start a ballet class.' It prevented some of the disastrous and disturbing results of Dean's suggestions of what the first few demons who asked for orders should go do to themselves.

Poughkeepsie made the news that summer as having the most ballet schools per capita at forty-three, and coincidentally, the worst ballet schools anywhere, as almost none of the people running them could actually dance ballet. Kept actual students away from the classes which, all things considered was a very good thing.

The infighting between the ballet schools to be the very best in Poughkeepsie, and thus the most pleasing to their lord and master sent three demons back to Hell without the Winchesters' assistance, and leveled an abandoned warehouse, much to the delight of the Poughkeepsie Committee for Urban Renewal.

But Dean's eyes still flashed yellow, and more demons kept coming to him.

-

"Command me!" the demon in Grand Falls had shouted at Dean between punches and splashes of holy water.

Sam had stopped reading from the book. "What?" Dean had said flatly, fist drawn back.

"You killed him. You inherited his sphere of influence. The last of the children was to have killed him..." it had glared at Sam, "...and taken his power as reward. Why else do you think he would have left the bullet in the gun, if not to ensure his own death?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean had said, low, dangerous, gripping the demon by the collar.

"The last of the children refuses to command. We had a commander, and you killed him, for all and forever. His power is now yours. Dead man's boots." The demon looked up at Dean through fervent shining black eyes. "We are _your_ army now, Dean. Command us."

If Sam hadn't pulled him off, Dean would still be punching.

- - -  
(that's all, hope it made sense!)


End file.
